


Stay Honest, Stay Just

by continuity_of_ducks



Category: GLOW (TV 2017)
Genre: Bash is not very good at being an adult, F/M, Gen, HIV/AIDS Crisis, Internalized Homophobia, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-06
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2020-10-10 21:03:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20534561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/continuity_of_ducks/pseuds/continuity_of_ducks
Summary: When Florian disappears, Bash has to consider some things that he'd previously managed to ignore.





	1. Chapter 1

It wasn’t that Bash hadn’t known about gay bars before—he’d passed them when he snuck into dive bars with his friends before they were old enough to get in anywhere else. It’s good I don’t have to worry about that, he’d thought, so dirty and seedy and filled with strangers. That’s one thing his mother didn’t have to worry about, of all the things. And then AIDS has come to Los Angeles, and Bash had tried not to pay attention but somehow it kept coming up, in the newspapers and at the kind of fundraisers his family would never attend. Bash isn’t that interested in sex in general, not when he’s sober, anyway. It’s good, of course, it’s fun, but so are movies and wrestling and talking to people at parties.

What a relief to not worry about it, to not be one of those men who wore perfume and had little dogs and who, as his father had once put it, minced around. What a relief to be interested in sailing and tennis and, if there had to be something that didn’t quite fit, wrestling. But because it would be so terrible, because just the thought of going in would upend so much, Bash feels guilty every time it comes up, and then, as AIDS comes up more, as gay people are more in the news, that guilt merges with the knot in his stomach that is there all the time, from all the ways he worries he will upset Birdie. 

And then Florian had mentioned going to one, once, that he’d been brought by a friend, just because the friend works there, and Bash had said “oh!,” without meaning to, and without meaning anything by it, but Florian has blushed and said made a joke about it being his evening off and it was rude to ask butlers what they did with their evenings off. 

Bash was still thinking about it two hours later, what Florian thought of it, if Florian had talked to anyone and if he had, what was it like to have a man flirt with you. Florian must have been thinking about it too, because when Bash said, with no context, after they’d ordered pizza and watched Back to the Future, “what was it like?,” Florian had known immediately what he meant. 

“It was fine. Fun to be bought drinks, for a change, but the drugs weren’t as good.” There’s a pause then, and Bash waits for him to explain and he waits for Bash to ask, but in the moment nothing happens. Florian barely has any other friends, and Bash is jealous that there is someone he doesn’t know, but who knows Florian well enough that Florian would agree to go to a gay bar with him, when Florian’s not even gay. There’s another explanation, of course, and Bash both thinks it and doesn’t think it, and it hovers in potential space between them. A few weeks later, Florian says he’s going out with a friend, if Bash isn’t throwing a party that night—it’s five pm, and the arrangement is that Bash will give him a heads up by four. Bash isn’t having a party, which is a pity, because he was going to be home that night and wanted to hang out. “You’re welcome to come,” says Florian, “but we’re going back to the bar we went to last time, you know, Shenanigans, where he’s a bartender. But only if you want.” 

Bash doesn’t want to, of course, because he isn’t like that, and neither is Florian, because they, again, like action movies and wrestling and don’t drink cocktails or paint little portraits, or whatever gay men do. So Florian goes and Bash tries not to imagine men with their arms around Florian’s shoulders, or buying him drinks, or pulling him onto the dance floor. To forget about it, Bash does some coke, which is good because it feels less important that he’s home alone, but possibly worse because it makes him horny, and now he is horny and thinking about Florian at the bar, and about what it would be like to be touched by men like that. Pretty good, probably, if he were someone else, someone who was interested in that. After the coke comedown, and when he’s done jerking off, he falls asleep, and when he wakes up Florian is back, and they never mention the bar again, and Bash never asks where he’s going on his nights off. 

Anyway, then Florian goes missing, and Bash has been so busy, and broke, and is having so much fun with his wrestling team, that he doesn’t notice right away. Well, he notices, but first Florian has just asked for money and Bash doesn’t have it, because of the wrestling team., although he doesn’t know until the check bounces. Florian was annoyed but he’d been annoyed before, and Bash assumes he’s annoyed for the same reason that Bash would be annoyed: because he hasn’t been home and there are other demands on his time now, that it’s not about money as much as about where his resources are. Bash doesn’t notice until he’s been gone for a few days, but once he notices, the house feels so empty. He can’t think about it too hard, so instead he crashes with the wrestlers, in Carmen and Rhonda’s room, and doesn’t go back home. 

Carmen asks him if he knows where to find Florian, and the only friend he knows about is the bartender, and the only thing he knows is the name of the bar. Which means that one night they are suddenly standing outside Shenanigans, on a normal street, and Bash has to go inside, and the guilt that is there all the time turns to panic. 

It’s obviously a gay bar, so obviously, there are men outside talking to each other and—and mincing, and almost no women, although Carmen and Rhonda are having fun dancing, and Rhonda has immediately found a hat somewhere. But what worries Bash really is that a lot of the men here look normal, look like Florian, look like him, not noticeably gay unless they are leaning up against each other, or, god, a few other things. It’s good that Bash has worn a turtleneck and a blazer, because it’s clear that he’s here on an errand. It’s also very clear to Bash, for the first time, that Florian is gay, and that’s why he came here, not just to see a friend or out of politeness, but to come and meet men and drink with them and touch them. How did he not know? And why did he have to be here now? Because if Florian could be gay, then people might think that Bash, standing here, is gay too, even in a turtleneck. 

He is relieved when the first bartender calls him Malibu Ken, because maybe Ken is iffy but at least it's clear that he's out of place here. But Florian's friend, Eric, well, he's very handsome in an obviously gay way, and also he looks Bash up and down and enunciates Bash's name in a way that makes him feel, just, uncomfortable. But also it's good that Florian has mentioned him, isn't it? Florian's friend is very handsome but also he doesn't know where Florian is, and also he gives Bash a very specific look that Bash has seen people give him before and now he finally knows what it means: they don't think he is anything, exactly, but they are wondering. "He's my butler," Bash says, to explain why someone he knows would be here. 

"Last time he left his bar tab open. You gonna take care of it?," asks Eric, and Bash is so relieved to be asked for money, he is used to that, he can do that. But when he reaches for his wallet, the man puts his fingers on Bash's wrist, brushing just near where the heavy weight of his watch sits, and says "I'm kidding. What can I get you to drink?," and Bash is briefly caught up in the moment, in the hand so close to his, in the music of the club, and in the way that the man is looking at him after he said his name so delicately earlier. "It's fun to be bought drinks," Florian had said, which is silly, Bash buys him drinks all the time, but in the brief moment--it is only half a second, really--Bash understands the appeal of a man buying him a drink. And then the man says, encouragingly, "on me," and Bash realizes what is happening and that the man is obviously confused, which is embarrassing for him, Bash. 

"No, uh, no thank--I mean, I can pay for my own drinks, and I'm actually not thirsty, now," he says, "or ever," because why would he ever drink here when he is here for business, which this is, because he is looking for his butler, who is not here, so he walks away. Rhonda and Carmen are still dancing and now it is embarrassing to even be in this place, since anyone could get the wrong idea, even Bash, if he forgot for too long. 

The women are still dancing and they want to stay, but Bash has to get out of there immediately, every second and the place is itchy under his skin, so he leaves Carmen with money for a ride home. "You'll find Florian," she reassures him, but that is secondary now to leaving, to going anywhere else. That is, until he leaves the club and is alone, and can't go back home because Florian isn't there anymore.

He goes home, home-home, because he doesn't know where else to go. The last time he was here, Gary didn't want to let all the women of GLOW in, but this time there must be a look on his face, because Gary tells him Birdie isn't home, but brings him into the kitchen. “Are you all right?,” Gary asks, and Bash realizes that he has turned up twitchy and distracted and is now eating soup in the kitchen without having really explained anything. “I’m having problems with my butler," Bash says, like this is still a money thing, like Florian is a domestic problem, and then Gary gives him the same look that he got in the bar, that he keeps getting. This time he wishes Gary would ask so Bash can tell him he isn’t, he isn’t. Instead Gary says that Florian came by already for money, that he’s going on a trip. 

Gary must have seen Bash cry in the past, but it’s been years, and it’s not a good time to pick the habit back up. Bash looks down at his soup until he can take a deep breath and smile like nothing is wrong, and Gary is still asking about money, does Bash need help managing, which is ostensibly what they are talking about. He doesn’t need help with money like that, but maybe he does for GLOW, and Gary says he’ll ask about that. 

Bash puts on old pajamas and goes into his room, the soft childhood opulence contrasted with the wall of wrestling memorabilia. He flips it over to the other side, with the mirror surrounded by cutouts of wrestlers themselves, his own sketches, promotional drawings. He used to look at them and feel fierce and for once not scared, making wrestling faces in the mirror. And now he tries it again, in the hopes that he will feel better with the same assurances, rolling up his shirt sleeves to pose. And he does for a moment, the rush of childhood endorphins. But with it he remembers Florian next to him. 

Bash searches under his bed and finds the box of wrestling memorabilia. There’s a picture of him and Florian as children, wearing t-shirts and grinning with the luck of being together and at a wrestling competition and being young. They’ve known each other so long. Why would Florian have left and not told him where he was going, even after a stupid fight about money? The picture is signed, and it stays “Stay Honest, Stay Fair, Stay Just,” and Bash knows that something is wrong.


	2. Chapter 2

Bash means to keep looking for Florian, and he does, a bit, he leaves a message on their answering machine and asks Gary to call around. But the person who is good at doing all that is Florian, and Bash sort of assumes that he is still taking care of it. Surely if he needs Bash, he’ll let him know. He knows Bash isn’t good at all of this, at the details of things.

But at some point there’s nothing he can do, because all the next steps are much worse, too bad to think about, calling around to Florian’s awful parents, or leaving messages in the personal ads, or calling hospitals. And besides, Florian was going on a trip, even if it was a trip where he didn’t tell Bash, or invite him. And instead there’s the wrestling to see to.

The show gets loses its patio furniture sponsorship, and gets moved to the middle of the night for some bullshit reason, and Bash worries. He’s put so much money into it—not real money, not important money, but enough that there isn’t more immediately to sustain it. So he and Debbie—maybe it’s good that she demanded to be a producer, who knows?—go to a convention to sell the format to someone. 

It’s a good day to start out with. His plan—cribbed from the Muppets Take Manhattan, but that’s fine—actually works. They start a whisper campaign, pretending to talk in bathrooms and on his cell phone and just to each other about how good GLOW is, how fun and how many people want it, and then they sit in the bar in the evening and wait for people to call them about it, hoping it works. 

It’s at this point where Bash pretty much stops remembering the evening, not from alcohol for once, although thank god for the alcohol that’s cushioning the evening. They got phone calls about the show, and he remembers being thrilled, he and Debbie toasting each other at the bar, taking notes on the back of napkins about who was interested. But then Debbie hands him the phone and the evening becomes his nightmare.

The woman on the phone is brusque and is looking to speak to him, and she tells him that Florian is dead. He hadn't known he was Florian's emergency contact, although it made sense. His was still Birdie's, but if he'd thought about it at all, he would have made his Florian's. 

Except that Florian is dead, which made no sense at all, because Bash is still trying to find him. And he is dead in San Francisco, which feels even less likely, because who would go to San Francisco if they could stay in LA?

Bash asks what happened and the woman tell him it was pneumonia, technically, and it takes him a minute, in the crowded bar, with Debbie still seated with a drink and the phone numbers that have been calling them back, and couples flirting at the tables, and waitresses moving around with plates and empty glasses, and the general buzz of the room full of people at the end of a work day, to decode what that means, pneumonia as the twist ending to a whole pile of things, the 'technically' doing more work than it should have to. 

It might be hard to find someone to take the body, the woman tells him, and asks if he knows how to contact Florian's parents. He tells he the number automatically, assuming it's the same one that he used to dial as a child. There are things he'll have to do later about this, because Gary will be able to help find a cemetery that will handle this sort of thing, if there's enough money, and he should ask. In the meantime the conversation is over and the phone is still beeping with callers on the other line who want to buy his wrestling show, which is doubly important now, deeply, worryingly important, because without it he is alone.

Nobody says AIDS, and Bash isn't sure he's even capable of saying it out loud if he needed to. He takes the next day off from GLOW--well, he doesn't show up, but it's the same thing--and calls a cleaning company because he doesn't even know what it MEANS at this point, he's been trying not to pay attention to any of the news. When they turn up he tries to explain, but again he can't say it and they don't need him to. They have done this before, it is happening everywhere, in the whole city, the whole state, and no one is safe, and he is not safe from it or from loss. 

He waits outside the house and stares at the pool. He hadn't cried immediately but now he pauses, as they bleach the whole of the house, the already white floors. He starts to cry now, glancing out of the corner of his eye to make sure they don't see him after he'd told them that there had just been a problem with his butler. If they see him crying they could think it was something else altogether.

* 

(He had kissed Florian a few times but not in a way that meant anything, really, just when they were high and no one else was around. They hadn't talked about it and Bash didn't think it mattered, really, but now it glows bright in Bash's memory, panicking him even when the woman at the hospital shakes her head and says not from kissing, if that's really the only thing he's worried about, and it is.)

*

He doesn't tell anyone from GLOW. It is good to have a thing that is separate from everything else he's thinking about, and he doesn't know where he would even begin. Instead he drinks some vodka and takes a pill, and turns up the next day feeling brittle and manic. He knows it's showing because Debbie keeps giving him looks, and finally asks if everything's okay. By that point the drug must have already worn off, but it doesn't feel like it has.

He has to focus, there is a show to do, the show, with all the television people he and Debbie tricked into coming. He gets dressed and Ruth gives him the rundown, and the notes that he'll need to announce. Rhonda is getting married, live, on the stage, to a fan, because of some immigration problem, Ruth tells him, but the wedding will take care of all of it. It will be, he knows, great TV. He asks the fan why he’s doing this, does he just want to sleep with her? And he say it’s not just that, it’s that living alone gets lonely. And that Bash knows.

Bash wishes he could be getting married, because that seems like it would solve most of his problems, being alone and having people leave and any worries that other people might have about him. And Rhonda seems nervous about the man she's marrying but not about the idea of marriage, confident that this will fix things.

Bash thinks about it all day, that the really easy thing would be if he married Rhonda. 

And then there she is, getting off a horse, wearing Debbie's old wedding dress, smiling very nervously at the leap she is making, while everyone else stands in the ring in combination bridesmaid/wrestling outfits--except for Carmen, who must have lost a bet. They have gotten a real minister, and Rhonda has filled out real paperwork, and Bash is there to be best man until, all of a sudden, he thinks no, this should be me, and objects right after the bit that he’s supposed to object.

“Is this for the show?,” she asks him, and he says no, don’t marry a stranger, marry him, he will, he wants to make her happy. 

“I’ve been coming to your room, and sleeping on your floor, trying to figure out how to tell you I love you,” he says. “Look. I—I have trouble processing my emotions sometimes,” and that part is true, the whole thing is true, because this is so easy and good, it makes sense, and he does not want to be lonely either. “Ideally before this we would have done on a date, but maybe we can just do it all backwards,” he says. 

Rhonda wavers for a minute but she decides to marry him, a nervous, determined look on her face that probably echoes his, that’s what he feels, nervous and determined, and then they are married and he kisses her and the wrestling show goes on, on live television.

Later Rhonda comes up to him and tells him he can still back out, and he says no, he meant everything, he loves her, and still in the moment it feels so true, and the new adventure feels so exciting. Her face worries him, though, and she says “I’m not sure I feel the same way yet.”

“We’ll take it one day at a time!,” he says, but he feels panicky. “Beginning tomorrow, we’ll wake up and we’ll head down to the county clerk’s office, get the marriage license taken care of, and then after breakfast, we’ll go get you a real ring, and not these cheesy fake ones.” He feels her waver, like she is just believing what is happening. 

“You want to get me a ring?” she asks. 

“Yes, of course. I want to do everything,” he says, and she nods. And then he kisses her goodbye, chastely, and goes back to work, leaving his wife—his wife—to get changed.


	3. Chapter 3

Sex with Rhonda is great. It’s great. It’s not that Bash is much more interested in sex than before, exactly, he doesn’t think about it all the time like he knows other people do. But with Rhonda it’s been a lot of fun, after the initial awkward starts, and he’s never had the kind of relationship before where he really knows the person. Possibly, he thinks, that has been the problem in the past, that he has been nervous meeting women and nervous in bed, and he isn’t, now, with Rhonda. And now they have practiced so much that they are good at it, together, by the first few weeks that they are in Vegas. 

The thing is that the more they have sex, the more he thinks about it in the abstract, which is good, probably. They fuck most mornings and most nights, and Rhonda would probably be up for more, if he was. And he’s started waking up ready, and getting hard at night without having to get ready in advance, thinking about the orgasm he usually had the night before. It seems like the things he had been worried about, about sex, and about women, and about his interests, might not be true at all, as long as he focusses very hard on this. As long as he doesn’t think about all the other things that he wants to, sometimes, when he’s on top of Rhonda and trying, trying, to do it all correctly.

He is having fun in Vegas, overall. 

One day they are supposed to go to the Hoover Dam, he and Rhonda, he and his wife, in his new car. Anyway, he'd been looking forward to the Hoover dam--who WOULDN'T? be--but then Rhonda is sick in his beautiful new car, and she's of course right that she has to get into bed. When Bash is bringing her back to the bedroom, it occurs to him that he's heard about this before, that women throw up when they're pregnant, and he thinks about it before he panics. It would probably be fine, Bash thinks. Debbie finds having a baby stressful, but he and Rhonda could probably find a nanny, they must HAVE nannies in Las Vegas because they have everything, and a baby could be good, right?

But that's not it. Rhonda just has a headache, really, and an IUD so she couldn't be pregnant anyway, although he isn’t entirely sure what that means. She lies back down in their bed and closes her eyes, and he isn't sure what to do in this moment. He turns out the lights and watches her for a moment, and leaves her alone to rest.

When he comes back she is still ill, the lights still dark, but he has done something wrong, because Rhonda had wanted him to stay. He isn’t used to this, to the idea that illness could bring tenderness, and he is not sure what to do for this, he is considering the idea of being cared for instead of being quarantined. 

“Migraines aren’t contagious, though,” says Rhonda, and he knows but in his family he was just left to wait it out. He doesn’t know how to care for people. If he had, maybe Florian would have said something instead of heading off, and if he had, maybe he could have helped. Maybe he is bad at this, at all of this. He doesn’t even know her enough to know about this.

He lies down next to Rhonda now and puts his hand on her forehead. “That’s perfect,” she says.

“Listen,” he said. “I know it’s a lot of change with living together and being married, and if any of this is coming from a place of stress and anxiety about me not being a good partner, then I want you to tell me.”

“It’s not,” she whispers, curled up against him. 

“Phew!,” he says. “’Cause I know we don’t really know each other, but I thought we could, you know, share our family history—” he keeps talking because he doesn’t know what to do.

“Bash, you’re talking,” she says.

“Right, right, right, quiet,” he says, and he tried to stop talking but he doesn’t know how to sit in silence, and it takes a few tries.

Overall, though, he is having fun in Vegas.

There are an extraordinary amount of people to meet and network with. The show is going GREAT, they are making a lot of money. He and Sam are playing squash with some producers, he is getting invited to shows, he keeps meeting new performers for the show, magicians and mimes and jugglers, which is great, and then every night he goes home to Rhonda. 

(One time when he gets home, Rhonda has a friend there, a man who does a drag act at the show, who is gay, who wants Bash to fund his show, and he also makes a comment when Bash talks about Rhonda, like he thinks Bash is joking about his wife, and Rhonda doesn’t notice but Bash doesn’t even know how to react, and he can feel himself becoming his mother’s son, cold and offended, because what else is there to do?)

Debbie doesn’t want to stay in Las Vegas but he is the owner of the show and HE is having fun and the show is making money so they stay, and she hates him and he doesn’t care, he is getting good at being cold and decisive instead of worried. This is what it is like to be successful and married and rich, and it’s good.

His mother comes to visit and it should be terrible but instead Rhonda charms her, of course she does, Rhonda can charm anyone, but he was still worried. Instead they wind up with money, his inheritance, because Rhonda’s good with money, and now they are really having fun, because they are rich and in Vegas and can buy whatever they want, he can make investment, and he is so happy to wake up next to someone. He is too tired for sex most days now, but that’s normal, because they’re both busy, and does it really even matter, with everything going on? He’s having a great time regardless.


	4. Chapter 4

For a little while the money makes all of his panic go away. Briefly, yes, but sometimes it’s gone. He’d always worried about money—money that was dangled in front of him if he could just live up to his family’s expectations—and now that worry is gone. The money is there. And Rhonda is there too, and she’s good at business, and she’s always around. Bash never has to be lonely, and never has to deal with what loneliness would make him consider.

But then Rhonda, who was such fun before, keeps touching him in a way that makes it very clear that she is not too tired for sex, even right after sex. Of course it’s not that he doesn’t like it, but it just requires so much effort every time. And eventually, if they haven’t had sex in so long—it had been months without it by that point—surely it doesn’t matter anymore? Does she think he wants it? Or that it means something? She asks him about it, eventually, and he thinks she must be nervous that it is some bad sign, when obviously it’s not. "I love you,” he tells her. “And, hey, I'd want to stay married to you even if we never had sex ever again." 

Maybe if they had sex more, that would be better for her? Once a month? Or every few? But then he imagines that forever, and it is overwhelming. Easier not to think of it at all, really. But he is back to worrying now, back to the feeling that eventually something will catch up with him. 

He starts drinking a little more, to balance out the coke, and to just take the edge off the day. It lets him fall into bed at the end of each day and go right to sleep, instead of lying awake next to Rhonda, while he worries that she is worried that they are doing nothing. He feels awful most of the time, but he can’t tell if it’s a sort of permanent hangover or just the old worry.

He would just like it to stop, the whole focus on sex. He wishes it just wasn’t his responsibility. But it must be, right? That’s the point of being married, he thinks, and he snaps at other people flirting with Rhonda. He’s supposed to. That’s the point.

***

And then one night he gets home, a little drunk but not too drunk, and genuinely too tired to do anything. But when he opens the door, Rhonda has company. Well, not company, because he’s the man who the hotel had sent to fix their hot tub, but Rhonda has asked him to stay. He has a drink and he’s flirting with Rhonda and she’s enjoying it. She’s having fun in a way that Bash hasn’t seen in a while, that she’s clearly looking for from him. 

Rhonda looks nervous, though, and he doesn’t know how to tell her not to. “I hope that’s okay,” Rhonda says, and Bash pauses a moment before deciding. 

“No, that’s okay, I don’t mind. Why would I mind? Joe, can I top you off?,” he says. The three of them sit there. 

For a moment, he’s alarmed, and then he thinks, maybe this is the easy version. Maybe he can give Rhonda this, instead of some constant conversation about sex. Lots of people sleep with the staff, lots of his mother’s friends were constantly having secret affairs. Better to not have it be secret, and he can still wake up next to Rhonda, and can go to bed with her most nights.

“Do you want to kiss her?,” Bash asks Joe, and he does. Rhonda looks worried, she keeps glancing at Bash, and finally turns back to him like she’s about to ask a question. He waves it away. “Don’t worry about me. I love you, I want you to have everything that you want.”

“Do you want to kiss him?,” Bash asks, and Rhonda is breathing hard and nods. Bash watches them for a moment before he realizes that maybe he’s not too tired, that suddenly he’s turned on by it all. 

He goes over to kiss Rhonda’s neck for a moment, and then Rhonda leads the three of them to the bedroom. At first it is more of the same: he is kissing Rhonda, Joe is kissing Rhonda. And then he realizes his mistake.

The problem is that he is supposed to, ostensibly, be looking at Rhonda now, that is the point, even though it is hard to remember that at this moment, because Joe is also really right there, and, even though he is touching Rhonda, and kissing Rhonda, he is also looking at Bash. It is not unrelated to the look that people have given him in the past, that slightly concerned, knowing look, but it’s different because instead of worried it is interested, and Bash cannot stop himself from looking at Joe over Rhonda’s shoulder. And then it happens, because it was always going to happen, that Bash looks at him a second too long, and in that moment Joe stops kissing the back of Rhonda's neck and starts kissing Bash. It is the kind of kissing that happens right before something else, and then Joe reaches out and touches him too, and Bash forgets everything else, momentarily, in his wanting.

But he should be looking at Rhonda, that is the agreement he has just made with himself, but perhaps it's not the right one, because when he looks at her he sees a new flicker of understanding as she looks back. That's when he realizes his mistake, because having Rhonda in the room had seemed like a good idea until she was there looking at him.

No, the real moment he realized his mistake was afterwards, lying in bed, with Joe having kissed them both and gotten dressed and left. Rhonda had tried to say something to him earlier, but he'd gone to shower and by the time he'd gotten back, she'd fallen asleep. So now he's in bed and they will need to talk about it in the morning, but the mistake he is realizing is that now he cannot stop thinking about it and how to do it again. He had imagined it before, it's not that he hadn't imagined it, but in life it had been messier and odder and infinitely better, and now it is two in the morning and he is lying in bed next to his wife—his wife, oh my god—and he is considering the next possible time he could do it again, if there is any way to find a plumbing problem in the room and ask for Joe to be sent back up, right now, and he could—what? Fix a leaking sink and then blow Bash again, or—or something, while his wife is asleep in the next room over?

No, he decides, and gets up and goes to take a cold shower, but winds up jerking off anyway before turning the shower to cold. Possibly, he is realizing, possibly he does like sex a lot, or would, if it was not with Rhonda, which is still absolutely fine, but possibly he does not feel the same way about it that he would feel if the sex that was having was, instead—not that he hadn't considered it before, but now he's really thinking about it and it's becoming clearer than it had previously, when he'd not quite considered the finer points, or when the finer points were all he'd considered without the wider consequences—but anyway perhaps the thing was that he might be very interested in sex indeed if it was, well, with men. The problem is that now that he has thought this he is unsure how to unthink it. It is better to not enjoy things than to enjoy that, and so in the morning he will need to figure out what to do, he decides, in order to never have to think it again.


End file.
